AMD and ARM join RapidIO.org to par­ti­ci­pa­te in the Rapi­dIO spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on development

Lin­ley Pro­ces­sor Con­fe­rence, San­ta Cla­ra, CA, Octo­ber 22, 2014 – RapidIO.org, the orga­niza­ti­on that pro­mo­tes and deve­lo­ps stan­dards for the Rapi­dIO inter­con­nect archi­tec­tu­re, announ­ced today that AMD and ARM have joi­n­ed the RapidIO.org com­mu­ni­ty to col­la­bo­ra­te with RapidIO.org mem­ber com­pa­nies in the deve­lo­p­ment of an open spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on for mul­ti-node / core coher­ent sca­le out of 64-bit ARM® pro­ces­sors using Rapi­dIO as a coher­ent uni­fied fabric.

Mar­ket and indus­try trends are chan­ging the way enter­pri­ses and com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons infra­struc­tu­re car­ri­ers approach their data cen­ter and com­pu­ting stra­te­gies. Many enter­pri­ses are loo­king to vir­tua­liza­ti­on, fabric-based infra­struc­tu­re and sca­lable modu­lar designs as they explo­re how best to opti­mi­ze their resour­ces.  In order to meet this chall­enge, car­ri­ers have star­ted to levera­ge dat­a­cen­ters to help crea­te the­se ser­vices bridging the tra­di­tio­nal gap bet­ween dat­a­com and tele­com net­works to form a more uni­fied net­work. This uni­fied dat­a­cen­ter-net­work para­digm is being deploy­ed by exten­ding vir­tua­liza­ti­on tech­no­lo­gies such as soft­ware-defi­ned net­wor­king (SDN) and Net­work Func­tion Vir­tua­liza­ti­on (NFV) into the car­ri­er net­work domain deli­ve­ring impro­ved over­all end-to-end net­work uti­liza­ti­on and ope­ra­tio­nal efficiencies.

This type of over­all sys­tem fle­xi­bi­li­ty is at the very core of Rapi­dIO as the spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on assu­mes the­re are mul­ti­ple mas­ter, hete­ro­ge­neous pro­ces­sors in a sys­tem nee­ding to com­mu­ni­ca­te with each other through shared memo­ry, inter­rupts and mes­sa­ges.  Also, Rapi­dIO based sys­tems can include up to 64K pro­ces­sors, each with their own com­ple­te address space and sup­port­ing north/south, east/west peer-to-peer tran­sac­tions within a Rapi­dIO fabric.  Crea­ting an open spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on for mul­ti-node / core coher­ent sca­le out of 64-bit ARM pro­ces­sors using Rapi­dIO as a coher­ent uni­fied fabric will ext­ent the uti­li­ty of Rapi­dIO even further.

A dedi­ca­ted ARM 64-bit Coher­ent Sca­le Out task group has been for­med within the RapidIO.org Tech­ni­cal Working Group and includes the fol­lo­wing foun­ding task group mem­ber companies:

• AMD, ARM, Cavi­um, Frees­ca­le, IDT, IIT Madras, Mer­cu­ry Sys­tems, Mobi­veil, Texas Instru­ments and Xilinx.

“It is clear data cen­ter and per­for­mance cri­ti­cal com­pu­ting cus­to­mers in com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons infra­struc­tu­re and dat­a­cen­ter ana­ly­tics appli­ca­ti­ons requi­re open, mul­ti ven­dor, indus­try stan­dards based, low laten­cy mul­tipro­ces­sor uni­fied fabrics” said Rick O’Connor, Exe­cu­ti­ve Direc­tor of RapidIO.org, “We are very plea­sed to have the sup­port of both AMD and ARM as they join our strong RapidIO.org eco­sys­tem to help dri­ve this important ARM 64-bit Coher­ent Sca­le Out initiative.”

“AMD is a tech­no­lo­gy lea­der in com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons infra­struc­tu­re, indus­tri­al auto­ma­ti­on, data cen­ter and high per­for­mance com­pu­ting,” said Greg Ship­pen, Fel­low and Chief Archi­tect at AMD.  “We’re exci­ted to par­ti­ci­pa­te in deve­lo­ping a spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on for 64-bit ARM clus­ters over a uni­fied Rapi­dIO coher­ent sca­le out fabric.”

“As com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons infra­struc­tu­re tech­no­lo­gies con­ti­nue to mer­ge with data cen­ter tech­no­lo­gies the­re is an incre­asing need to build sca­lable hete­ro­ge­neous sys­tems,” said Char­le­ne Mari­ni, vice pre­si­dent of mar­ke­ting, embedded seg­ments, ARM. “We are proud to sup­port this Rapi­dIO initia­ti­ve to spe­ci­fy a coher­ent sca­le out of ARM tech­no­lo­gy over Rapi­dIO and fur­ther extend the ARM eco­sys­tem into the broa­der infra­struc­tu­re market.”

The RapidIO.org ARM 64-bit Coher­ent Sca­le Out Task Group is respon­si­ble for deve­lo­ping a spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on for mul­ti­co­re clus­ter sca­le out of 64-bit ARM cores with the fol­lo­wing functionality:

• Coher­ent sca­le out of a few 10s to 100s cores & 10s of sockets
• ARM AMBA® pro­to­col map­ping to Rapi­dIO protocols 
  • AMBA 4 AXI4/ACE map­ping to Rapi­dIO protocols
  • AMBA 5 CHI map­ping to Rapi­dIO protocols
• Migra­ti­on path from AXI4/ACE to CHI and future ARM protocols
• Sup­port for GPU/DSP floa­ting point hete­ro­ge­neous systems
• HW hooks and defi­ni­ti­on to sup­port RDMA, MPI, secu­re boot, authen­ti­ca­ti­on, SDN, Open Flow, Open Data Pla­ne, etc

RapidIO.org is issuing an open indus­try call for par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on in the ARM 64-bit Coher­ent Sca­le Out task group to com­pa­nies inte­res­ted in sup­port­ing the deve­lo­p­ment of this important per­for­mance cri­ti­cal com­pu­ting specification.

About Rapi­dIO

The Rapi­dIO uni­fied fabric archi­tec­tu­re, desi­gned to be com­pa­ti­ble with the most popu­lar inte­gra­ted host pro­ces­sors, com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons pro­ces­sors, and digi­tal signal pro­ces­sors, is a high-per­for­mance, packet-swit­ched, inter­con­nect fabric. Rapi­dIO addres­ses per­for­mance cri­ti­cal com­pu­ting needs in Data Cen­ter & HPC, Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons Infra­struc­tu­re, Indus­tri­al Auto­ma­ti­on and Mili­ta­ry & Aero­space mar­kets offe­ring high relia­bi­li­ty, increased band­width, and low laten­cy in an intra-sys­tem fabric. Rapi­dIO pro­vi­des chip-to-chip, board-to-board and shelf-to-shelf peer-to-peer con­nec­ti­vi­ty at per­for­mance levels sca­ling to 100s of Giga­bits per second and bey­ond. RapidIO.org, a non-pro­fit cor­po­ra­ti­on con­trol­led by its mem­bers, directs the future deve­lo­p­ment and dri­ves the adop­ti­on of the Rapi­dIO uni­fied fabric archi­tec­tu­re.  Learn more at www.rapidio.org.

About AMD

AMD (NYSE: AMD) designs and inte­gra­tes tech­no­lo­gy that powers mil­li­ons of intel­li­gent devices, inclu­ding per­so­nal com­pu­ters, tablets, game con­so­les and cloud ser­vers that defi­ne the new era of sur­round com­pu­ting. AMD solu­ti­ons enable peo­p­le ever­y­whe­re to rea­li­ze the full poten­ti­al of their favo­ri­te devices and appli­ca­ti­ons to push the boun­da­ries of what is pos­si­ble. For more infor­ma­ti­on, visit www.amd.com.

About ARM

ARM is at the heart of the world’s most advan­ced digi­tal pro­ducts. Our tech­no­lo­gy enables the crea­ti­on of new mar­kets and trans­for­ma­ti­on of indus­tries and socie­ty. We design sca­lable, ener­gy effi­ci­ent-pro­ces­sors and rela­ted tech­no­lo­gies to deli­ver the intel­li­gence in appli­ca­ti­ons ran­ging from sen­sors to ser­vers, inclu­ding smart­phones, tablets, enter­pri­se infra­struc­tu­re and the Inter­net of Things.

Our inno­va­ti­ve tech­no­lo­gy is licen­sed by ARM Part­ners who have ship­ped more than 50 bil­li­on Sys­tem on Chip (SoCs) con­tai­ning our intellec­tu­al pro­per­ty sin­ce the com­pa­ny began in 1990. Tog­e­ther with our Con­nec­ted Com­mu­ni­ty, we are brea­king down bar­riers to inno­va­ti­on for deve­lo­pers, desi­gners and engi­neers, ensu­ring a fast, relia­ble rou­te to mar­ket for lea­ding elec­tro­nics com­pa­nies. Learn more and join the con­ver­sa­ti­on at http://community.arm.com.